The sun, a merciless eye in the sky, blazed through my windows, stretching expectant shadows like mourners across the floor. Hours, thin and taut, had passed since Thalia’s departure. An unnerving stillness gripped the house, each creak of a floorboard every indrawn breath a prelude to disaster. My sword, a familiar comfort against my spine, was a grim counterweight to the dread settling in my gut; the dagger on my thigh felt cold as a tombstone. I stalked the confines of my room, boots striking a restless rhythm, the words “This is it” a relentless tattoo on my mind. Time didn’t crawl; it congealed, each phantom tick of a clock a hammer blow towards the inevitable night.

Then, the light wasn’t merely extinguished—it was devoured. One moment, sun-drenched familiarity; the next, an absolute, suffocating blackness that choked the air and stole my breath. Every hair on my body rose, a primal alarm, as icy dread prickled my skin. I lunged for the balcony, hand closing on the cool metal of the handle by sheer instinct, and threw the doors wide. An abyss greeted me. The city’s usual glow had been snuffed out, leaving an eerie, silent void.

Adrix materialized beside me, a ripple in the fabric of the air his only herald. “This is… unpredicted,” he breathed, his voice a low rasp, the usual silken composure frayed, his jaw a knot of granite. He didn’t need to voice the fear coiling in my own stomach; it was a shared beast.

My fingers spasmed around the worn leather of my sword hilt. Too soon. Far, far too soon. The question – What had happened? – clawed at my sanity.

“I’m going out,” I managed, my voice a surprisingly steady anchor in the turmoil. Turning, I plunged into the hallway’s sudden, treacherous gloom. My boots skidded on the polished wood as a chorus of screams—thin, brittle, unmistakably human—shattered the silence from beyond our walls, flooding the house with raw terror. Closer, a shriek sharp enough to etch glass ripped through the air, a sound born from within our very sanctuary.

A Scourge—a humanoid nightmare sculpted from shadow, its eyes burning like embers in a forge, claws impossibly long and slender—erupted through the hallway door in an explosion of stone and pulverized plaster. Instantly, Adrix was a reassuring presence at my side, the air around him thrumming with a faint, sharp ozone tang.

I met its charge, its claws scything through the air with lethal speed, close enough to feel the cold wind of their passage against my cheek. I ducked, the movement fluid and desperate, as Adrix unleashed a torrent of searing mana. The creature sidestepped the blast with an eerie, liquid grace, its burning gaze snapping to him, the new, more potent threat. He fired again, and again, each blast missing, the concussive force of their impacts shaking the house to its foundations, raining plaster and dust like malevolent snow.

“Enough!” I roared, the sound raw in my throat, tasting grit and fury. “You’ll bring the house down on us!”

I lunged, my blade meeting its claws in a piercing shriek of tortured metal, sparks showering the gloom, briefly illuminating its monstrous, shifting form. I felt the subtle shift in its balance, anticipated its counter, and spun, reversing my swing in a lethal arc. The sword hissed through its torso, the shadowy substance yielding with an unnerving lack of resistance. With a final, soul-piercing screech that vibrated through my bones, it dissolved into tendrils of acrid, stinking smoke.

Noctis burst through the mangled ruin of the front door, his chest heaving, his hair dusted with debris. His sword was already out, a sliver of captured moonlight in the gloom from the shattered entrance. He spared Adrix a single, hard glance that encompassed the devastation. “Damage assessment later. Move! Finnian and Liora are already engaging.”

Outside, the cool air was a palpable entity, thick with the cloying stench of smoke and the metallic tang of fear. We found Finnian and Liora in moments, their faces grim masks in the unnatural, flickering light of distant fires that painted the sky in hellish hues.

“To the palace—now!” Noctis commanded, his voice a whip-crack cutting through the rising chaos. He was already a blur, sprinting towards the main gate, weariness shed like a discarded cloak. We pounded after him, our footsteps a frantic drumbeat on the ravaged street.

Suddenly, a man, his face a rictus of pure horror, ran past us from a darkened side alley. A grotesque Shadowviel—a vortex of writhing, oily darkness, grasping tendrils lashing—slithered in hot pursuit. The aura around Noctis’s sword blazed, a fierce, cleansing nova. He met the Shadowviel in a whirlwind of destructive grace, his blade striking true, again and again. Each impact tore a guttural, wet shriek from the entity until it unraveled, dissipating into oily, dissipating wisps.

The fleeing man never broke stride, a phantom swallowed by the gloom. Grant him refuge, I thought, a desperate, fleeting hope in the symphony of carnage.

We pressed on through the violated capital. More Shadowviels, and other, fouler things that skittered and oozed in the periphery of our vision, roamed the once-grand avenues. Their guttural snarls and the wet, tearing sounds of their feasting formed a sickening soundtrack to our grim passage. Lifeless bodies lay like discarded puppets on the blood-slicked cobblestones, mute testament to the sudden, brutal onslaught. A chilling certainty in my mind: I hadn’t seen a single Royal Knight. Not one. Their absence was a gaping, bleeding wound in the city’s failing defense, they who were the bedrock of these very streets.

As if summoned by the dread-filled thought, a Shadowviel appeared from the oppressive darkness directly in my path, claws already extended in a predatory lunge, a low, hungry growl vibrating in its depths. Instinct screamed. I dropped, the wicked talons whispering inches above my head, their unnatural coldness raising goosebumps. Twisting, I drove my sword upward in a powerful, rising arc. The blade met its shadowy core with a satisfying, sodden thud. With a sound like air gushing from a punctured lung, it too dissolved, leaving only a faint, foul miasma.

We reached the town square—or what desecrated bones remained. Buildings stood as gutted, skeletal husks against a smoke-choked sky. Rubble choked the once-grand fountains, and an eerie, profound silence hung heavy, broken only by the distant, hungry crackle of flames and a low, pervasive moaning that could have been the wind sighing through ruins, or something far, far worse.

Huddled behind a toppled, soot-stained statue, a woman clutched a small, whimpering child, her eyes vast pools of unspeakable terror. Two Shadowviels, their forms like congealed night, materialized from the ruins, flanking them, tendrils twitching, cutting off any sliver of escape. Horror had sculpted the woman’s face into a frozen mask; they didn’t move, didn’t scream, simply stared, paralyzed.

Finnian reacted with blinding speed. A concentrated bolt of shimmering golden mana erupted from his outstretched hand, obliterating the first Shadowviel in a silent, violent implosion of shadow. His second shot, a hair’s breadth too wide, seared the cobblestones beside the remaining creature. Before it could pounce, a third, quicker blast struck true, and it too disintegrated into oily smoke.

Liora rushed to their side, her expression softening into a fierce compassion. “Are you alright?” she asked, her voice a gentle balm in the harshness, her eyes scanning them for injuries before ushering them towards a more sheltered alcove carved into a collapsed storefront.

While Liora saw to them, I swept my gaze across the ruined square, sword held at the ready, every nerve ending screaming. Too quiet, I mused, a sliver of fresh unease pricking my neck. Far too quiet. With this level of carnage, there should be more of them swarming.

As if my thoughts were a summons, a cacophony of high-pitched, thunderous shrieks ripped through the air, echoing off the shattered buildings with deafening force. Spoke too soon, I thought grimly, a cold knot tightening in my stomach. Hundreds of Shadowviels, a ravenous black tide of claws and teeth, surged up the main thoroughfare behind us, their myriad limbs scrabbling on the stones with a sickening, chitinous clicking that grated on the nerves.

Adrix and Finnian were a synchronized whirlwind of defensive magic. A shimmering, dome-like barrier of pure energy flared into existence around our small group. Adrix gritted his teeth, sweat already gleaming on his brow. Finnian launched blast after devastating blast of crackling energy into the advancing horde, each one carving a momentary, bloody swathe through their seemingly inexhaustible ranks.

Just as the first wave of slavering jaws and razor claws crashed against the faltering barrier, a lone figure in gleaming silver armor charged into the fray from a perpendicular street, a longsword blazing with an inner, righteous light. In their wake, fifty more followed, their polished plate reflecting the chaotic fires, tabards of deep royal blue a defiant splash of color in the desolation.

“The Princess’s Guard!” Finnian roared over the noise, a surge of desperate, almost painful hope coloring his voice.

One knight, his armor more ornate, bearing a silver hawk crest upon his breastplate, carved a bloody path towards our barrier. He moved with the lethal grace of a storm, his enchanted blade a whirlwind of silver light, dispatching Shadowviels that materialized around him even as he bellowed over the din of battle: “To the castle! The Princess needs you—now! We will hold this tide!”

It was only then I registered the crackling bolts of fire and ice erupting from within the knights’ disciplined phalanx, tearing through the Shadowviel ranks. Battle-mages, woven into their formations—a formidable, coordinated force.

“Alright!” Noctis yelled back, already pivoting, his face a mask of grim, renewed determination. “You heard the man! Let’s move! Thalia needs us!”

Our passage through the remaining stretch of the capital was a brutal, relentless gauntlet. We fought through a living nightmare of snapping jaws and tearing talons, each street gained a testament to sheer, bloody-minded will. The echoes of the Princess’s Guard’s valiant, desperate stand faded behind us, replaced by the chilling, ever-closer sounds of the encroaching horde. Adrenaline, potent and raw, and the desperate, burning need to reach Thalia fueled our flagging limbs. Finally, bloodied, bruised, and gasping for air, we broke through the last of the skirmishes to stand before the towering main gates of the Royal Palace.

Its usually majestic facade of white marble was now a canvas of ugly scorch marks and pockmarked by a gaping hole near the ramparts, from which smoke coiled like a dying serpent. The grand banners of the kingdom hung in scorched, pathetic tatters. I swallowed, the acrid taste of the city’s ruin and the metallic tang of blood coating my throat. A profound, glacial sense of foreboding washed over me. Whatever awaited us within those silent, imposing walls, it was not peace.

The fury that had eviscerated the city, however terrible, now seemed but a fading, vicious prelude. This, I knew with certainty, was where the true war would ignite—a desperate conflagration for the fate of our world, a final stand against the encroaching abyss.